Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Murders of Giti Harari & Wendy Aldrich Part One

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The Murders of Giti Harari & Wendy Aldrich Part One · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Call podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. In the nineteen eighties, Texas was
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: expanding fast. Cities, especially cities like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio,
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  Speaker 1: pushed outward, replacing farmland with subdivisions, cul de sacs and
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  Speaker 1: rows of identical roofs. New highways cut through land that
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  Speaker 1: had been rural only months before, and those roads were
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  Speaker 1: lined with shopping strips and convenience stores. Not long after,
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  Speaker 1: model homes appeared on roads in suburbs that hadn't existed
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  Speaker 1: a year earlier. The houses were packed in close and
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  Speaker 1: someone had to sell them. Real estate agents became the
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  Speaker 1: frontline workers of that growth. Many worked out of trailers,
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  Speaker 1: temporary offices, or converted houses, carrying keys to dozens of
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  Speaker 1: vacant homes and opening doors for people they had never met.
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  Speaker 1: They worked alone. They kept appointments with strangers in empty houses.
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  Speaker 1: During this time, many women were entering the field they'd
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  Speaker 1: ultimately dominate, But that wasn't the only pattern emerging across Texas.
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  Speaker 1: The cases appeared in scattered places Brazas County, Galveston County,
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  Speaker 1: and Harris County. In urban offices suburban model homes and
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  Speaker 1: rural properties miles from the nearest neighbor. There was no
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  Speaker 1: task force, no industry warning, no official recognition of a pattern.
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  Speaker 1: Each murder was treated as its own tragedy, its own mystery,
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  Speaker 1: and its own crime. At the tail end of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty one, Virginia Ginger Freeman was forty years old and
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  Speaker 1: working as a realtor in the Brian College Station area
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  Speaker 1: of Brazas County. She had been in the business long
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  Speaker 1: enough to know the routines. Phone calls from strangers, last
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  Speaker 1: minute appointments, and showings in rural areas were all part
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  Speaker 1: of the job. On December first of that year, Ginger
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  Speaker 1: received a call at her office from a man who
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  Speaker 1: said he was interested in buying property. It seemed like
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  Speaker 1: an easy sale. He told her he wanted to see
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  Speaker 1: country land outside of town. The call sounded serious enough
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  Speaker 1: that Ginger agreed to meet with him to tour a property.
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  Speaker 1: She left her office that day to conduct the showing.
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  Speaker 1: She never came back. When Ginger didn't return home, concern
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  Speaker 1: quickly turned into alarm. She hadn't called anyone to say
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  Speaker 1: she was running behind. She'd simply vanished during a semi
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  Speaker 1: routine work appointment. Her body was later found in a
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  Speaker 1: rural area of Brazis County, behind the property she'd left
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  Speaker 1: her office to show. Ginger had been stabbed in the
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  Speaker 1: neck eleven times, strangled, and bludgeoned in the head with
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  Speaker 1: a rock. The scene indicated she had been attacked and
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  Speaker 1: killed at or near the property. There was no evidence
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  Speaker 1: that anyone else had been present besides Ginger and her attacker.
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  Speaker 1: Investigators found biological material under Ginger's fingernails evidence that she
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  Speaker 1: had fought back. It suggested a struggle, a moment when
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  Speaker 1: she had tried to defend herself against whoever had attacked her,
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  Speaker 1: but there were no witnesses, there was no clear motive,
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  Speaker 1: and no suspect was identified. Ginger's murder quietly became a
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  Speaker 1: cold case in a county with relatively little violent crime.
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  Speaker 1: The killing of a real estate agent during a property
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  Speaker 1: showing was unsettling, but it was treated as an isolated tragedy.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, no one knew it was the beginning
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  Speaker 1: of something. Then, in the summer of nineteen eighty three,
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  Speaker 1: a triple murder shocked a quiet stretch of West Houston.
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  Speaker 1: Schumant and Company realtors located in a converted Victorian house
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  Speaker 1: at sixteen thousand and seven Memorial Drive. Specialized in high
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  Speaker 1: end residential properties. The boutique firm employed about ten agents
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  Speaker 1: and handled upscale home sales for affluent clients. On Friday,
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  Speaker 1: August nineteenth, nineteen eighty three, the office closed at around
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  Speaker 1: five thirty pm. Most of the staff had already left
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  Speaker 1: for the weekend. Inside the building remained Elizabeth Shumett, the
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  Speaker 1: fifty four year old owner of the company, along with
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  Speaker 1: two agents, joe Anne Brown forty six and Francis Ivey sixty.
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  Speaker 1: Some time after closing, all three women were attacked. No
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  Speaker 1: one nearby heard the gunshots or the screams. At about
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  Speaker 1: six thirty pm, another agent returned to the office to
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  Speaker 1: check her schedule for the following week. When she walked inside,
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  Speaker 1: she immediately saw it. Elizabeth and Joanne were lying motionless dead.
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  Speaker 1: Francis was still alive but critically wounded. Paramedics rushed her
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  Speaker 1: by life flight helicopter to Hermann Hospital, but she succumbed
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  Speaker 1: to her wounds a few hours later. Investigators quickly determined
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  Speaker 1: all three women had been shot in the back of
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  Speaker 1: the head at close range. Execution style. They said Elizabeth
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  Speaker 1: Shumett had also been bound with a Nylon Venetian blind cord.
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  Speaker 1: The positioning of the victims suggested the women had been
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  Speaker 1: restrained or controlled before the shootings. The office showed no
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  Speaker 1: signs of a struggle or forced entry. At first, robbery
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  Speaker 1: did not appear to be the motive. Jewelry and purses
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  Speaker 1: remained at the scene, although investigators later discovered some valuables
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  Speaker 1: had been removed or hidden under furniture, suggesting the victims
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  Speaker 1: may have tried to conceal them when they realized something
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  Speaker 1: was wrong. Witnesses reported to seeing a man near the
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  Speaker 1: office around the time of the killings, and detectives eventually
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  Speaker 1: concluded that two different firearms had likely been used, suggest
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  Speaker 1: testing more than one attacker. From the beginning, police believed
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  Speaker 1: the murders were planned premeditated. No one was ever arrested.
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  Speaker 1: Four years later, another attack on real estate agents would
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  Speaker 1: bring a similar sense of fear back to Texas. On
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  Speaker 1: March seventh, nineteen eighty seven, Betty Joe Hudson, a forty
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  Speaker 1: year old realtor in Galveston, left her office to show
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  Speaker 1: a house on the west side of the island she
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  Speaker 1: was filling in for her boss that day. Earlier that morning,
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  Speaker 1: the office received a phone call from a man who
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  Speaker 1: said he was from Dallas. He claimed he had seen
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  Speaker 1: a first sale sign, jotted down the realtor's number, and
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  Speaker 1: insisted on viewing a house that afternoon. He gave a name,
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  Speaker 1: but no one would remember it later and no written
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  Speaker 1: record was kept. Betty Joe left the office at around
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  Speaker 1: one pm for a two PM showing at a home
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  Speaker 1: on the twelve thousand, seven hundred block of Conquistador in
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  Speaker 1: the Spanish Grant subdivision. That was the last confirmed time
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  Speaker 1: anyone saw her alive. When she didn't return home that evening,
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  Speaker 1: her husband, George Hudson, began searching for her. The next morning,
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  Speaker 1: he and her boss drove to the Spanish Grant property,
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  Speaker 1: where Betty Joe's van was still parked outside. After retrieving
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  Speaker 1: a key from the office, they entered the house. George
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  Speaker 1: climbed to the second level and found Betty Joe lying
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  Speaker 1: at the top of the stairs. She had been shot
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  Speaker 1: once in the head, just above the right eyebrow with
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  Speaker 1: a small caliber firearm. The house showed no signs of
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  Speaker 1: a struggle or forced entry. The scene was described as orderly,
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  Speaker 1: with nothing disturbed. Investigators noted two sets of footprints on
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  Speaker 1: the carpet, one from someone wearing shoes and another from
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  Speaker 1: someone who appeared to be barefoot. Some jewelry was missing
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  Speaker 1: from Betty Joe's body, but her purse and other valuables
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  Speaker 1: were still inside her van. Despite numerous tips in the
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  Speaker 1: days that followed, none produced indictable evidence. The case quickly
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  Speaker 1: went cold. Just months later, in West Harris County, another
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  Speaker 1: agent was found dead in another empty house. Esther, Darlene Collins,
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  Speaker 1: was thirty five years old and worked as a sale
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  Speaker 1: supervisor for Pacific Standard Homes. She operated alone out of
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  Speaker 1: a model home on the twenty two thousand block of
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  Speaker 1: Kent Falls Drive, showing new houses to prospective buyers. On
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  Speaker 1: the afternoon of her death in nineteen eighty seven, Esther
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  Speaker 1: was working at the model home. At approximately four thirty pm,
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  Speaker 1: A couple arrived to tour the property. When they entered
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  Speaker 1: the house, they went upstairs and found Ester's body in
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  Speaker 1: the bedroom. She was gagged, her hands had been bound.
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  Speaker 1: She was stabbed several times in the chest. Investigators said
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  Speaker 1: it appeared she had tried to fight off her attacker.
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  Speaker 1: She was fully clothed. Authorities found no evidence of rape
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  Speaker 1: or attempted sexual assault. Nothing appeared to be missing from
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  Speaker 1: the home. Ester's purse was found in a downstairs office
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  Speaker 1: with her money and personal belongings still inside. Her car
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  Speaker 1: was parked in front of the house. A detective for
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  Speaker 1: the Harris County Sheriff's Department said investigators had no motive
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  Speaker 1: for the killing and no suspects. The scene was described
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  Speaker 1: as baffling, no robbery, no sexual assault, no clear reason
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  Speaker 1: for the attack. The crime appeared controlled, liberate, and personal.
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  Speaker 1: By the end of the decade, Texas investigators were looking
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  Speaker 1: at a growing list of dead women, dead realtors, Most
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  Speaker 1: of them were alone, working inside empty houses. Each scene
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  Speaker 1: seemed controlled, each woman brutally killed, and before the decade
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  Speaker 1: was over, more names were added to women tied to
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  Speaker 1: the same story, and in time both slipped quietly out
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  Speaker 1: of the headlines. Gd Hariri was a woman navigating two
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  Speaker 1: very different worlds. She was born the daughter of Mohammad
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  Speaker 1: Hariri and Sidiga Hafizi on June twenty first, nineteen sixty
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  Speaker 1: in Beaurougard, Iran, a place with one of the oldest
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  Speaker 1: cultural histories in the world. In the years before the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine Iranian Revolution, Iran sent thousands of students
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  Speaker 1: to the United States to study, especially in fields like
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  Speaker 1: science and engineering. By the mid nineteen seventies, Iranian students
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  Speaker 1: made up a remarkable share of the international student population
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  Speaker 1: at American universities, most of them expecting to finish their
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  Speaker 1: education and eventually return home, but history changed that path
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  Speaker 1: for many of them. In nineteen seventy nine, when Ged
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  Speaker 1: arrived in the United States to begin her academic journey,
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  Speaker 1: she entered a growing community of first generation Iranian immigrants,
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  Speaker 1: many of whom had chosen or had been forced by
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  Speaker 1: circumstance to remain in America after the Islamic Revolution. At home,
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  Speaker 1: it was a relatively new diaspora, shaped by political upheaval,
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  Speaker 1: international tension, and the search for educational and economic opportunities.
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  Speaker 1: Ged had enrolled at Cleveland State University in Ohio, where
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  Speaker 1: she met Wendy Elaine Aldridge when the two were assigned
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  Speaker 1: as roommates in nineteen eighty one. Wendy grew up in
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  Speaker 1: the Midwest and came from a very different cultural background
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  Speaker 1: than the woman with whom she would share her space.
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  Speaker 1: She was born on September eighteenth, nineteen sixty, in Eliria, Ohio,
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  Speaker 1: to Keith and Shirley Aldridge, and grew up in the state,
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  Speaker 1: graduating from north Ridgeville High School before beginning college. Friends
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  Speaker 1: later described her as soft spoken and thoughtful, someone who
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  Speaker 1: often listened more than she talked. On paper, the two
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  Speaker 1: young women seemed very different gd Hiriri was an Iranian
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  Speaker 1: immigrant pursuing an engineering education while adjusting to life in
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  Speaker 1: a new country. Wendy was a Midwestern All American still
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  Speaker 1: finding her direction, eventually moving towards psychology and therapeutic work.
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  Speaker 1: But what began as a shared dorm room quickly became
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  Speaker 1: a close friendship. Roommates often become friends simply because of proximity,
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  Speaker 1: and in their case, proximity quickly became familiarity, but the
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  Speaker 1: bond quickly moved beyond that. They studied together, they attended
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  Speaker 1: classes together, They spent long evenings talking about school, relationships
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  Speaker 1: and their plans for the future. Friends and classmates later
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  Speaker 1: remembered the two women as unusually close, almost inseparable. They
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  Speaker 1: were often seen together around campus, walking to class, or
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  Speaker 1: sitting together in common areas. It became regular enough that classmates,
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  Speaker 1: some some times treated them almost as a pair rather
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  Speaker 1: than as two separate individuals. If you saw Wendy, GD
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  Speaker 1: was likely nearby. If you saw GD, Wendy was usually
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  Speaker 1: not far behind. Those early years were marked by ambition
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  Speaker 1: and study. Their friendship formed in an ordinary college dormitory,
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  Speaker 1: would survive years of change, relocation, and uncertainty. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty four, GD Hariri and Wendy Aldrich transferred together to
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  Speaker 1: the University of South Alabama in Mobile, carrying with them
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  Speaker 1: a friendship that had already endured major changes. Wendy continued
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  Speaker 1: studying psychology, while GD continued pursuing chemical engineering, a field
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  Speaker 1: dominated then as it largely still is now by men,
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  Speaker 1: and one that demanded even more of an immigrant woman
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  Speaker 1: building a life far from home. On August seventeenth, nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty four, while still in Alabama, Ged married an acquaintance
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  Speaker 1: named Brett. According to later reporting, the marriage was arranged
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  Speaker 1: for immigration purposes, helping her secure permanent residency in the
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  Speaker 1: United States. A few months later, in November nineteen eighty four,
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  Speaker 1: Wendy entered a similar arrangement, marrying an Iranian student named
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  Speaker 1: Said so he could remain in the country In both cases,
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  Speaker 1: the marriages were not traditional relationships, of course, and the
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  Speaker 1: couples never lived together. Even as her personal circumstances shifted,
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  Speaker 1: Ged remained focused academically. By the summer of nineteen eighty five,
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  Speaker 1: she had completed her Bachelor of Science and Chemical Engineering
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  Speaker 1: at the University of South Alabama, joining a relatively small
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  Speaker 1: number of women and even fewer immigrant women, a technical
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  Speaker 1: degree that required mathematical precision, long classroom hours, and rigorous
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  Speaker 1: lab work. Wendy's life was also changing. Like GD, she
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  Speaker 1: moved through college, relocation, and early adulthood while trying to
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  Speaker 1: figure out work, identity, and what came next. Their lives
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  Speaker 1: were beginning to take different shapes, but the friendship endured
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  Speaker 1: through school, marriage, and uncertainty about the future. GD and
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  Speaker 1: Wendy remained close. By early nineteen eighty five, the two
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  Speaker 1: young women had both moved to Houston, Texas, a sprawling
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  Speaker 1: city shaped by the energy industry, aerospace, medical research, international trade,
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  Speaker 1: and rapid suburban growth. It was a long way from
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  Speaker 1: Cleveland and Mobile, but it was also a place where
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  Speaker 1: young professionals and immigrants came looking for opportunity. Houston's growing
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  Speaker 1: international community included a rising Middle Eastern and Iranian population,
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  Speaker 1: making it a natural place for gd to try and
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  Speaker 1: build a new life. Besides the weather, the city wasn't
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  Speaker 1: all that different from those in the Midwest, so Wendy
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: likely felt like she fit right in. When they arrived,
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  Speaker 1: Houston was in the middle of a complicated transition. Only
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  Speaker 1: a few years earlier, the oil boom had made it
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  Speaker 1: one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Skyscrapers
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  Speaker 1: rose downtown, new freeways pushed outward, and master planned communities
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  Speaker 1: spread across what had recently been farmland and pine forest.
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  Speaker 1: For a time, Ged worked alongside Wendy at a department
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  Speaker 1: store while trying to establish herself in Houston. Earning a
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  Speaker 1: degree in chemical engineering had taken years of demanding coursework,
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  Speaker 1: but the city's shifting economy meant in gneering jobs were
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: not always easy to secure right away. Employment listings show
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  Speaker 1: she was actively pursuing work in her field, even placing
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  Speaker 1: ads in the Houston Chronicles Professional Work Wanted section, describing
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  Speaker 1: herself as an entry level chemical engineer with a bachelor's degree,
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  Speaker 1: a strong GPA, and a willingness to work long hours.
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  Speaker 1: It was the language of someone determined to build a
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  Speaker 1: career in a new city and a demanding profession. During
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  Speaker 1: that period, Ged began dating Beru's Junigani, a petroleum engineer
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  Speaker 1: living in Houston who she met while working at the
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  Speaker 1: department store. The relationship became serious for a time. GD, Wendy,
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  Speaker 1: and Barrus all lived together, but the arrangement eventually grew strained,
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  Speaker 1: and Wendy moved into her own apartment. According to one friend,
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  Speaker 1: Wendy felt Baru's was pushing GD toward marriage too quickly,
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  Speaker 1: while Beruz believed Wendy was interfering in their relationship. Still,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: the two friends remained close. At the time, Ged was
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: still legally married to Brett in Alabama. That marriage ended
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  Speaker 1: in divorce on April seventh, nineteen eighty six. Four days later,
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  Speaker 1: on April eleventh, GD Hariri married Berrus. She was twenty
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  Speaker 1: five years old, he was thirty one. That same year,
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  Speaker 1: Houston changed once again. The oil market collapsed, energy companies
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  Speaker 1: cut jobs, engineering firms downsized, and the city's economic future
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: suddenly looked far less certain. Still, Houston did not stop growing.
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  Speaker 1: The Texas Medical Center continued to expand, NASA remained a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: major employer, and the Port of Houston kept trade moving
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  Speaker 1: across the outer edges of Harris County. Developers continued building
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: subdivisions marked by young families and working professionals still looking
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  Speaker 1: for stability in a changing city. To sell those homes,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: builders relied on model houses, fully furnished properties usually placed
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: at the entrances of new developments, where prospective buyers could
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  Speaker 1: walk in off the street and tour floor plans with
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a sales agent. Unlike a traditional office, though, a model
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  Speaker 1: home often had no receptionist, no coworkers, and no security.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Agents spent long stretches of the day alone, meeting strangers
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  Speaker 1: and houses staged to look lived in but empty for
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  Speaker 1: much of the day. That line of work would be
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  Speaker 1: gd's last. In January of nineteen eighty eight, twenty seven
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  Speaker 1: year old g Dhreri accepted a position with Gimcraft Homes,
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  Speaker 1: a company building new and prefab houses in northwest Harris County.
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  Speaker 1: As a sales agent. She was assigned to a model
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  Speaker 1: home in the Copper Creek subdivision near Loginbow Road, an
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  Speaker 1: expanding neighborhood of newly built houses, fresh streets, and partially
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  Speaker 1: completed landscaping. Her job was to greet potential buyers, explain
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  Speaker 1: floor plans and answer questions about construction, financing and neighborhood amenities.
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  Speaker 1: On paper, it was a job tied to Houston's suburban growth.
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  Speaker 1: In practice, it meant spending hours alone in an empty house,
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  Speaker 1: opening the door to people she'd never met, in a
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  Speaker 1: neighborhood that was still taking shape, still under construction. Ged
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  Speaker 1: was uneasy with that reality, especially after her coworker quit
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that April and she was left alone more often. She
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: didn't like being by herself in the model home, particularly
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: late in the day when visitors slowed and the surrounding
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: streets grew quiet, but Ged was cautious. She called friends
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: and family to check in, and sometimes left messages on
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the family's answering machine saying where she was during the day.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: She also relied heavily on her husband, berus, who traveled
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: frequently for work. No matter where he was, he called
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  Speaker 1: her two, three, even four times a day to make
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  Speaker 1: sure she was okay. When he was out of town,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Ged often spent the night with friends rather than stay alone.
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  Speaker 1: On Wednesday, May eleventh, nineteen eighty eight, Ged was by
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  Speaker 1: herself at the Jimcraft Mond Home. On the sixteen thousand,
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  Speaker 1: five hundred block of Battle Creek Drive. That evening, at
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: around six point fifty pm, she spoke to a friend
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  Speaker 1: by telephone and said she still had four showings scheduled
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: before she planned to go home. Later that night. Berus
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: returned from a six day business trip to Canada. When
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: he got back home in Houston at around eleven thirty pm,
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  Speaker 1: Ged was not there. Concerned, he called friends and asked
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  Speaker 1: two people who lived nearby to check at the model home.
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  Speaker 1: When they arrived, Gd's car was still outside inside the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: two story brick house. One of the friends entered and
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  Speaker 1: found her upstairs in the master bedroom. Police were called
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  Speaker 1: and they soon descended on the crime scene. There were
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  Speaker 1: no signs of robbery. The house was not disturbed, furniture
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  Speaker 1: remained in place, nothing appeared ransacked. The only item reported
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  Speaker 1: missing was GED's purse. Her body was fully clothed. There
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  Speaker 1: was no evidence of rape. One detail, however, stood out
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  Speaker 1: among the rest. Model home sales agents often had one
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  Speaker 1: last task before leaving for the night, going upstairs, checking
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  Speaker 1: the rooms, turning off the lights and activating the alarm.
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  Speaker 1: GEDI disliked doing that alone in the evening, but on
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: May eleventh, she had gone upstairs, investigators found her earrings
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  Speaker 1: neatly placed on a bedside table beside her keys, suggesting
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: she may have been in the final moments of closing
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: up when something happened, and autopsy later showed she had
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: been stabbed at least seven times in the abdomen and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: lower chest, apparently with a medium width blade folding knife.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: She also had defensive wounds on her hands, a sign
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: that she had to fight off her attacker. Many of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the nearby houses were either newly finished or still unoccupied.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Witnesses were scarce, and there was no confirmed sighting of
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: anyone leaving the house that night. Investigators found only two
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: names written in GED's appointment book, even though she had
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: said she expected for showings that evening. The identities of
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the other two prospective buyers were never confirmed. At first,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: they considered whether GED's murder might be connected to other
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: killings of real estate workers in Texas, but they also
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: saw important differences esther. Darlene Collins, another Houston area real
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: estate agent killed months earlier, had been bound and gagged.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Betty Joe Hudson and Galveston had been shot. Virginia Freeman
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: had been beaten, strangled, and stabbed. Those details matched exactly
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: what happened to gd Hariri, so at least publicly, detectives
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: treated her murder as an isolated crime. The case turned
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: cold quickly. The news of GED's death reached her close friend,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Wendy Aldridge fast. At the time, she was living in
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: northwest Harris County, only a few minutes away from the
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Copper Creek subdivision where the murder had taken place. When
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: she learned what had happened, Wendy reacted with shock that
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: quickly turned into overwhelming grief. Within days of GED's death,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: she traveled to the funeral home with the victim's family
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and insisted on seeing her friend one last time. Friends
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and family gathered for her funeral. During the service, Wendy
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: wrote a short poem to Ged and placed it inside
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the casket along with a rose. For her GED's death
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: was not simply the loss of a friend. It became
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the center of her life. She struggled to accept that
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: someone she had known for nearly a decade, someone she
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: had loved, was suddenly gone. It was something she was
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: unable to process. The murder did not feel distant to her,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: It felt personal. Over the next several weeks, it would
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: begin to reshape everything she did. Wendy became increasingly focused
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: on Jed's death. She talked about it and began visiting
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the subdivision where her good friend had worked. She wanted
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: to see the model home where Ged had died, then
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: back to the cemetery where she was buried. She asked
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: friends to go with her. Some declined, uncomfortable returning to
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: the scene of a violent crime. Wendy kept going back.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: She attended a candlelight vigil that was held outside the
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: model home shortly after the killing. The gathering drew members
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of the local real estate community, friends of GD, and
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: people from the surrounding neighborhoods who had heard about the case.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: It was during that vigil that Wendy met a woman
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: named Jasmine Hassani. Jasmine told Wendy she had also been
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: a friend of Gd's. The two women spoke about their
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: grief and shared memories of the woman they had both lost.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: For Wendy, who had been struggling with the sudden loss,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the connection seemed comforting. Jasmine told her that her pain
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: was understood and that she was welcome among the people
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: who had cared about GD. But Wendy's grief deepened. Gd's
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: grave was located at Forest Lawn South Cemetery along Almeda
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Genoa Road in southeast Houston. Visitors to the grave began
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: noticing the small tributes that appeared there, candles, blue balloons
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: printed with the words I Love you, all things left
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: by Wendy. She often brought a small white bible with her.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: She'd sit beside the grave, reading it quietly, sometimes for
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: long periods of time. The visits became routine. She would
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: place flowers and balloons on the grave, arrange them carefully,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: and sometimes water the grass and plants surrounding the headstone.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Then she would leave. But something unusual began happening after
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: those visits. When Wendy returned to the cemetery later, the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: items she had placed there were often gone. The flowers
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: had disappeared, the balloons had disappeared, the candles were gone.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: At first, it seemed like a coincidence. Cemetery groundskeepers sometimes
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: removed items that had blown away or had deteriorated, but
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the pattern continued. Wendy would leave flowers, someone would remove them,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: then she would return and place new ones there. But
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: that was only the beginning. A perplexing, though seemingly harmless
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: start to what would become another terrible tragedy. Next time
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: on Gone Cold, Texas True Crime, The continued story of
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Wendy Aldridge. If you have any information about the murder
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: of gd Hariri, please contact Crime Stoppers of Houston at
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: seven one three two two two eight four seven seven.
• 31:45
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• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a light on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get
• 31:51
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• 31:55
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• 32:00
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• 32:03
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• 32:07
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• 32:11
  Speaker 1: we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,